Short films to help teach life skills for teens

The producers of the DVD are now hoping it will be used as a resource by schools across Australia [File photo].

ABC

A new campaign has been launched based around a series of new, hard-hitting realistic short films that aim to get teenage boys to talk about issues like depression and sexuality.

The new resources will help the efforts of teachers, given some of the educational material they had to use still featured 1970s actors wearing flares.

The simple things, like asking someone out on a date, can become all-consuming when you are young.

"I was doing that thing when you repeat the last word out of every sentence and hope to God that it makes sense somehow," one boy said.

Young men can also face more serious concerns, like drugs, crime and sexuality and the new DVD called 6 addresses some of these issues through short films about six mates.

It was produced by the city of Melville in Western Australia and the driving force was health promotion officer Janet Armarego.

"What we're trying to do is we're trying to give young men that insight into the fact that things may seem really bad in your life at any point in time but it always gets better, it doesn't stay like that," she said.

Irrelevant 'joke' material

Mrs Armarego started work on the DVD when she discovered that the current educational material was old and irrelevant and there was nothing to help get young men talking about their feelings.

"A lot of the resources that they watch at schools these days are probably made about 20 years ago and are more of a joke than they are actually sort of credible in terms of what young men do these days," she said.

The music used in 6 is modern and the language is realistic with plenty of swearing.

To try to get it right, the film-makers did consultations with young people about their lives.

"So we asked about their own ... group of friends - what do they look like and give us some of the character profiles and tell us a bit more about what sort of stuff you do?" Mrs Armarego said.

The DVD is now being launched nationally with the help of Headspace, the federally-funded youth mental health initiative.

Headspace chief executive officer Chris Tanti says it is important because young men are facing serious issues.

"We know that guys - generally right throughout the lifespan - don't talk about emotional issues," he said.

"But particularly young men are pretty embarrassed about talking about what they are going through and some of the challenges they face and some of the stuff that causes them problems."

Males account for 80 per cent of suicides in Australia and young men are twice as likely as women to have substance abuse problems.

"There is a lot of peer pressure for young men around alcohol use and substance use generally but certainly with young men there is considerable risk taking behaviour and I think 6 covers that very well," Mr Tanti said.

The producers of the DVD are now hoping it will be used as a resource by schools across the country.